Things No One Told Me; List #437

A couple of weeks ago, Daver and I ran into my neighbor across the street, one who had recently had her first baby. Being the lovable sap that I am, I immediately made a beeline for her in a desperate attempt to hold the squishy! baby! (I had to fight Dave off of him, first. Daver loves babies) When I asked her how she was, she began to weep.

She told me precisely how I felt after Ben was born: she was actually quite terrible. Her baby wouldn’t stop crying, well, ever, and she just didn’t know what she was doing wrong. Where were these maternal feelings she’d heard about? Why did she feel like she was doing it all wrong?

I told her that I was not in the habit of telling people horror stories before they had children/bought a house/ate at Jack in the Box, because I always thought it sounded kind of mean. She then told me that she’d WISHED that someone had told her how hard babies are.

In this vein, I am going to start making my own lists of things I wish someone had told me. Before I’d had kids or been knocked up.

Things Aunt Becky Wishes She’d Known Before Getting Pregnant:

1) After your first pregnancy, you will look about 6 months pregnant as the positive pee stick is drying.

2) Your nipples will now reach epic proportions of pancakes. And not the whimsical silver dollar ones.

3) Oh, and they’ll turn from a delicate pinkish hue to a much darker brownish/black.

5) You’re certifiable, but you have no idea of this. Instead you think you’re the only sane one left on the planet. If this isn’t your first pregnancy, you will be forced to watch yourself go off the wheels on the crazy train and be powerless to stop it.

6) If this is your first pregnancy, you will assume that this pregnancy is the most important pregnancy since Mary birthed Jesus.

7) You will eat a whole lot of food to try and make yourself less queasy. While it doesn’t work, not really, it will cause a couple of extra pounds to be added inexplicably to your frame. Which will annoy you because YOU DIDN’T EVEN ENJOY PUTTING THEM ON.

8) Worrying will become part of your daily routine. And will annoy the hell out of the rest of the world.

9) What To Expect While You’re Expecting was written by The Devil. Ignore this book as it will just make you feel badly about yourself.

10) Taking a decent dump may feel like cause for a press release. Don’t do it, for God’s sake, spare people the thought of you hunched over the crapper trying to push the world’s saddest poo out.

Oops. Sorry*.

(*I’m not sorry at all)

11) Suddenly anyone and everyone will waltz through your dreams and have wild passionate sex with you. Even people you find disgusting and/or hate. (Randy Jackson, anyone?)

12) While I’ve heard of some people having wild sex FOR REAL while pregnant, I can’t say I’ve been part of it. Especially once I’ve reached whale-like proportions and it feels like what it is: A Mercy Fuck.

13) Someone, somewhere will buy you the ugliest clothes you’ve ever seen for your unborn child. And you will have to sit there while grinning like an asshole and tell them that you looooovvvveee the little outfit with the stupid looking bows on it.
For your 7 year old son.

14) Honest to God strangers will not only feel the need to rub your belly without so much as a handshake hello, but will then ask you if you plan on breast feeding or not. This be dangerous waters, matey.

15) IF AT ALL POSSIBLE, tell no one what you plan on feeding your child. Or make a really tasteless for joke like, “We were thinking Jack Daniels, but do you think that Crown Royal is better?” Otherwise, you’re going to get a lecture. If you’re tasteless, people will just run away from you.

16) Most of the baby crap out there that they try to sell you is just that: crap. And newborns look stupid dressed in anything other than onsies. Trust me when I say that I speak from experience here.

17) You will hardly ever spend time in your perfectly coordinated nursery. Kids don’t play in their bedroom until they’re about 4 or 5, so while I would never suggest NOT doing up a nursery, I wouldn’t go ass-wild on it either.

18) YOU WILL KNOW WHEN YOU ARE IN LABOR. NOTHING ELSE FEELS LIKE LABOR, NO MATTER HOW MUCH YOU WANT IT TO.

19) Your ass will inexplicably become hugemongeous and now you will finally have Junk-in-da-trunk. Which is either awesome or horrifying.

20) No one but you* can figure out what is actually on the ultrasound pictures. Cute, perhaps. Frightening, also perhaps.

(*this is debatable. I cannot for the life of me figure out where the head is on Baby Link’s most current US from 8 weeks ago. And I’ve been trained to read these things.)

21) Feeling the baby kick for the first time is perhaps the finest part of pregnancy. It only becomes painful when their ickle feeties get to be the size of golf balls. Mean, busy golf balls. And then they sometimes bruise your liver. For serious.

22) Maternity clothes will fit you differently during different parts of your pregnancy. What might look cute with your wee beer-belly during the first trimester will look downright dumb and ill fitting hours before you give birth.

23) Steer clear of anyone who claims any of the following:

* I was back in my size 4’s when I left the hospital!
* I’ve never felt better than when I was pregnant!
* Breastfeeding really helped me take those 5 pesky pounds off!
* Having a baby is soooooo easy!

I mean, even if they’re not lying through their grubby teeth to you, they’re going to make you feel bad. And TRUST ME when I tell you that you will have plenty of things to feel bad/inadequate about.

24) Pregnancy is an excellent cure for modesty. I cannot recall a time when I didn’t just whip down my pants in front of the doctor whether it was my OB or not. Perhaps I am also a nudist.

25) Enjoy it as best you can. Sure, you feel ugly as shit, you’re gangly and have reached hippo proportions, you can hardly make it an hour without going to the bathroom and peeing out a tablespoon of liquid, you have heartburn so badly you could sear paint from the walls, and you’re starving but queasy. It’s all true. BUT, unless you’re a Dugger or someone equally creepy, it only happens a handful of times.

Besides, it’s one of the few times you can actually evoke, the “But I’m pregggnnnnant! excuse on your partner.”

#11. So FUNNY! When I was pregnant with Boo I had a dream like that about Simon Cowell, hahahahha. Eww.

#14. I HATE that! I don’t like people in my business even when I do know and like them. I almost punched a stranger on reflex when I was pregnant with Monkey and the woman (without any warning at all!) reached out to pat my stomach. I was irate.

#18. I honestly didn’t know that I was in labor with Monkey! I got to the hospital at 6am to be induced and was told that I was already 8cm dilated and they couldn’t believe that I had walked into the hospital on my own, haha.

Better than breastfeeding, I was told by my MALE boss that I should push the baby out and not have a C-section…as if anyone in their right mind would CHOOSE to be cut in half like that! Oh and thanks for the input on how the kid makes his entrance.

Oh and one more to add…Everything that ever annoyed you about children in the past to which you said “My kid will never…” Your kid will.

And…as I’ve said before- you’re creating LIFE. You know, that’s pretty incredible. Actual human beings are being manufactured in your own body BY your own body. This requires some difficulties, yes, but honestly- would you trade that experience?
And yes, I’ve had children. Four.

True. True. and True. Thanks for bringin’ it home! I especially like #24. By the time you’re ready to deliver, you don’t care if the 6 o’clock news crew shows up, cameras and all, as long as they can help GET.THAT.BABY.OUT!

I always have the urge to reach out and touch “the belly” but stop myself because I remeber how creepy it was to have strangers do it to me.
Also, I think listening to your own body and not the nurses is good advice. My post delivery nurse was a pain while I was trying to nurse. Baby was doing fine, I was fine, everything was fine but she wanted me to hold her different, sit different, have her latch different. Obviously I was doing something right since my daughter was a very chubby baby!

You posted this during a moment that I needed it most. Seriously, thank you. I am a mother of an 8 year old TTC # 2 for a year now. I belong to a TTC buddy group in which I am a.)the only one that is already a mother and b.)the only one who hasn’t gotten knocked up yet in the year we’ve been a buddy group.

I endure lengthy pictured paragraphs that I have to read about their nurseries and I’m going to try this method and I read about this and that and OH GOD STOP IT! Call me when it’s born and you’re begging your mother not to leave you alone with this thing that keeps oozing and wailing and then we’ll talk. But for the most part, I just let them pretend that it’s all going to be the way it is in their head now. Bwa Ha Ha!

*disclaimer – I’m on Clomid right now and really needed that vent-session*

Your post was just what I needed to be thankful for who I am and what I have.

I think you forgot one thing: fetal brain drain. You get dumb, lose all short term memory.
And #5: sadly, after the kid is 3 it’s probly not likely it’s the wacked-out hormones anymore but, it’s all I got. And then, have another, and go double-crazy!
Oh, and LOVE#23. The sister -in-law – all the way. BARF on her.

— the people who design maternity wear often get confused and think YOU’RE the baby. So if you want to wear something other than pastel? Without a big bow that makes you look like a present? Tough nuts. It’s all fug.

— Babies don’t sleep. They just don’t.

— Ditto for the nursery. See above: baby doesn’t sleep. Won’t need the room. Hold off on the painting and wall trim, for real.

Oh that was a great list. I can identify will all of them and I swear at one point after E was born he looked at me with a look that scared the piss out of me. It was a mean look of pure hate that is the only way I can explain it. I have never told anyone that so now I tell the world.

I think you forgot one thing: fetal brain drain. You get dumb, lose all short term memory.”
OMG…I have always called it Placenta Brain…and mine has never gone away!!!!
somehow the gestating child sucks away some brain cells..and they never return…
If I could count the times I have forgotten STUPID things..or called my kids by their siblings name!?!?
I would count them, but I can’t remember..lol..

I would add the part about using the sitz-bath as much as possible, it really helps.

Eat fiber chewable pills like they are going out of style so you don’t get the grapes out of your poo-area.

p.s. I actually told my girlfriends this and to have a good cry daily when their hubbies came home. Give him the baby and go lock yourself in a room that is comfy and cry for 10 minutes or so. it helped a lot!!!

* Heartburn. Everything gave it to me, it had the intensity of 10,000 burning suns and nothing (NOTHING) would ever make it go away completely. Water, breathing, & sleeping were all things created by the devil to torture me.

* Peeing. Yes, you will go pee 5 bazillion times a day. The moisture in the air will make you have to go pee. The baby will move a certain way (mine camped on by bladder) and you will still be washing your hands from the last time and will have to sit back down and pee. It will feel like you haven’t peed in months but only 8 drops will come out.

* Your sense of smell. That will become your Super Power. I could have replaced the bloodhounds in our local police department. Your favorite cologne/perfume? Will make you hurl. The smell of food? Will make you hurl. Hell, the smell of water made me hurl. Taking a shower/bath/brushing my teeth was SUPER FUN.

* Sleep. You will never be a heavy sleeper again. Pregnancy prepares you by never letting you have hours minutes of consecutive sleep again. So that when the baby comes you can hear the tiniest, lightest whimper. You will even wake up if you donâ€™t think you hear the baby breathing.

And Beck, that’s just the pregnancy part. Get this woman my book STAT. She needs to hear that what she is feeling is quite normal. Or give her a link to my blog if she wants to hear how I have felt around my colicky infants with no sugar coating. And then tell her that it will eventually get better no matter how hard it blows now. But she won’t believe that part.

This is genius. Truly. All of these things are so true. AND, I would send this list to myself at the beginning of each pregnancy-because for some reason we forget HOW hard it is and go through it all over and over. I know it must be necessary to have little or no memory of previous misery, or everyone would stop at one. Honestly though, my first was when I was young, I didn’t suffer at ALL compared with the following two. (until she turned 13 or so, then God made up for the easy pregnancy and babyhood) (REAL good)